Actors - Nicole duFresne

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	Actors - Nicole duFresne

Nicole duFresne (1977-January 27, 2005) was a Minnesota-born playwright and actress. She was killed on Manhattan's Lower East Side when two young men accosted a group consisting of her, her fiancé Jeffrey Sparks and her close friend Mary Jane Gibson and her boyfriend Scott Nath, sometime after 3:00AM on the 27th.

Actress and Playwright

A graduate of Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts, duFresne wrote or collaborated on five plays, including the two-woman show Burning Cage. She and Gibson collaborated on both the writing as well as the performances. A show about two women in a Boston asylum who are targeted for clandestine brainwashing experiments with LSD and shock treatments, it won major accolades on its US and Canadian tour and was performed at the Seattle Fringe Festival 2002.

Moving to Brooklyn in 2003, duFresne was a founding member of the and performed with LAByrinth Theater, Algonquin Productions and Woman Alone Theater Company.

Her Murder

In the early morning hours of January 27th, 2005, duFresne, Sparks, Gibson and Nath were returning home from a night of celebratory drinking. DuFresne has just gotten a new job at the Rockwood Music Hall. A large group of teens stepped from an alley, and one of them pulled a gun and demanded money from the group. Sparks shoved the assailant and tried to push his way past them, at which point he was pistol-whipped. According to Sparks neither he nor anyone else in the group had noticed that one of their assailants had a gun. One of the robbers reportedly said, "It doesn't have to be like this, we just need some money." Another of the would-be robbers went for Gibson's purse. In challenge, duFresne responded, "What do you think you're doing? What are you going to do, shoot us next?" The robber aimed the pistol at Gibson and fired, but the chamber was empty. He then turned to duFresne, fired and ran. The shot hit her in the chest. Sparks ran back to help duFresne only to find her on her back on the sidewalk. She died in Sparks' arms.

Media References

The May 8, 2005 episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent contained a murder scene stunningly similar to Nicole's.

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Actors - Nicole duFresne

Actress and Playwright

Her Murder

Media References

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